Their names may be long gone, but to hundreds of local people they still have a familiar ring... Laporte Titanium Ltd, Titan Products, Fisons being among them.

In 1963, these factories were well established on the Humber Bank and in March that year the Telegraph proclaimed that the area was one of the nation’s most important chemical producing areas.

Development of the great chemical factories had occurred over a 20-year period. Before the Second World War, the Humber Bank was a barren area.

It was not until 1948 that the pioneers of the first site, British Titanium Products, went into operation.

British Titan Products, pictured in November 1979.

Laporte Titanium went into production at Battery Works, Immingham, in 1953.

In eight years, British Titan Products’ factory, the foundations of which were built from Blitz rubble, saw its output increase sevenfold.

In 1963, more than £14 million was being invested south of the Humber by two of Britain’s biggest firms – Imperial Chemical Industries and Fisons.

The Laporte Titanium factory on the Humber Bank, pictured in April 1961.

And besides chemicals, the area was also becoming a centre for rubber products through the Dunlop Rubber Co Ltd, which was established at Immingham in 1955, and the Doverstrand rubber latex plant, which in 1963 was being built.

As these industries grew, so too did the port of Immingham.

One of the major developments in the late Fifties was the building of the Henderson Graving Dock at a cost of £2 million – said to be the finest of its kind between the Tyne and the Thames.

An aerial view of the new Henderson Graving Dock at Immingham, pictured in September 1960 before the dock was completed, while the cofferdam was still in place and before the entrance gate was installed. On the far side of the dock, in the top left hand corner of the picture, is the fertiliser factory of Fisons Ltd, with its conveyor belts to the quayside. On the extreme right hand side is one of the new coaling appliances. To the left of the Henderson Dock is the workshops of the Humber Graving Dock and Engineering Co Ltd and, beyond them, the old graving dock and the entrance lock to the main dock. In the left foreground can be seen the platform of Immingham Dock Railway Station.

The original dock had a length of 740ft and a width of 56ft. The second dock to be built was 600ft by 90ft.

The building of the Henderson Dock was the biggest civil engineering undertaking south of the Humber since the building of Grimsby’s No 3 Fish Dock, some 23 years earlier.